Today's Features

Tom Woods
Master Gardener
If excessive heat and drought ruined your summer garden or, like me, prevented you from planting one, now is the time for your second chance.
Many favorite vegetables can be planted over the next month for harvest throughout the fall and into winter. What’s more, FoodGardener, a new email service from Pender Cooperative Extension, will increase your chances of success by keeping you up to date on when and how to plant as well as how to sustainably manage garden pests.
Fall Vegetable Gardening

Cheryle Jones Syracuse
Family and Consumer Science Staff
NC Cooperative Extension
Brunswick County Center
If you’ve been to a doctor lately, chances are you’ve had a blood test for vitamin D. In recent years, doctors are routinely asking for this test to determine if you have enough vitamin D in your body.

With our weather beginning to cool down into autumn, I start thinking about flavorful and hearty soups that are perfect for this time of the year.
Hungarian goulash is neither a soup nor a stew but somewhere in between. It’s primarily a beef dish cooked with onions, sweet or pickled peppers and paprika. In some recipes, potatoes or noodles are added.

Instead of plundering, pirates will gather to raise money for the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Southport during the annual Pyrate Masquerade on Friday, Oct. 14.
Sponsored by the Friends of the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Southport, the event will feature a dinner buffet, dancing, raffles and revelry from 6-10 p.m. at the Southport Community Building.

Ruth Ann Grothe of Calabash is on a mission to make the 2011 Shallotte/South Brunswick CROP Hunger Walk better than last year’s event.
A year ago, the event surpassed its goals for raising friends and funds in the fight against hunger, with more than 125 walkers topping the $10,000 goal by nearly $700 dollars. One elementary school student, Powell Palmer of Shallotte, raised $1,500 of that total, according to Grothe.

“Bottoms up” this time of year might cause a person to think about an October fest party and tippin’ back your favorite brew. And this time of year a person may also consider an astronomical bottom, which is just as nice as an ice-cold brew.
The moon seems extra bright this time of year, and as a bonus, you can view the king of the planets right next to it this week.

VARNAMTOWN—With the 57th anniversary of Hurricane Hazel coming up this weekend, Marlene Varnam has a priceless memento to help her remember.

Tucked in a room of her house is a pinewood chest-of-drawers that her late husband, Carson Varnam, salvaged from the Lockwood Folly River when Hazel wrought her destruction on North Carolina on Oct. 15, 1954.

Did you drive by Ingram Planetarium in Sunset Beach on Sept. 28 and wonder what was going on? The parking lot was filled with dozens of vans and trucks, people with headphones on were running around yelling “Action!” and “Cut!” and brightly colored cables snaked in and out of the building and across the planetarium lobby.

The Museum of Coastal Carolina is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays in October. Family programs begin at 11 a.m. These programs are described below and are appropriate for all ages.
On Fridays at 11 a.m., watch museum docents feed the live animals in the Touch Tank. Children and adults will learn a lot about these fascinating animals; what they eat and how they feed, and everyone will have an opportunity to help with the feeding.

The Ocean Isle Beach Chapter of the American Wine Society will sponsor its first-ever wine tour of North Carolina wineries Nov. 3-4 and will be limited to 40 participants. The wine tour will visit wineries in the Yadkin Valley and Piedmont Appellations, said Stanley Barwikowski, chapter chair.
“This will be an excellent opportunity for area wine lovers to experience fine North Carolina wines firsthand,” Barwikowski said. “Participants on the tour will visit 10 state wineries and in several cases be given a winery tour and tasting by a local winemaker.